Friday, April 29, 2016

Posted as a comment on The Answer Sheet, Washington Post, April 28. Related to discussion of “New U.S. rules for standardized testing have been drafted. Here’s what they mean for kids.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/04/28/new-u-s-rules-for-standardized-testing-have-been-drafted-heres-what-they-mean-for-kids/

The "computerized curriculum-instruction-testing packages" mentioned by Monty Neill as a “multiple tests” option is known as competency-based education, and as Neill notes, it combines instruction and testing. The ESSA contains an interesting section encourages the development of competence-based education as a testing program (sections 1201 and 1204).

Competency-based education (CBE) is a radical and expensive innovation that replaces regular instruction with online "modules" that students work through on their own. Students take tests in order to move to the next module. It is being pushed by computer companies without consulting educators and without a proper research base.

A recent report from the National Governor's Association, a report enthusiastic about CBE, includes this statement: "Although an emerging research base suggests that CBE is a promising model, it includes only a few rigorous evaluations and analyses of current and ongoing CBE pilots and similar programs."

The born-again pronouncements against over-testing which started with President Obama's speech a few months ago might be a means of introducing competency-based, which could mean testing every day. Pearson, in fact, suggests that CBE should take the place of end-of-the-year testing.

Monty Neill statement about "Multiple tests": Following ESSA, the negotiated regulations allow states to administer multiple “interim” tests throughout the year, adding up their results to reach a final score, instead of relying on just one big test at the end. Whether that will lead to better assessments (e.g., portfolios of student work over the year) or be used to facilitate computerized curriculum-instruction-testing packages remains to be fought out state by state."

Scofield
(1916) described books selected by high school students enrolled in an elective
class called "outside reading." Students were required to read four
to seven books, depending on the books selected, keep a notebook and make an
oral report at the end of the semester.A book list of 300 books was made available and students were allowed to
read books not on the list, "but few did so." (p.548).Students were not allowed to select books
required for a course.

Scofield
presented a list of the most frequently selected books.Scofield's description is very revealing:
"An examination of these titles shows that the students have selected far
better literature than we might expect from some of the assertions we hear
about the habits of high-school pupils" (p. 545).

Even
one hundred years ago, people were concerned that young people were not reading
"good" books.Scolding teenagers is nothing new (Krashen,
2011).

Among
the top ten: Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Call of the Wild, The Last of
the Mohicans, Kidnapped.

Making college available to everyone is a wonderful idea. But let’s not ignore career paths that do not require college, and are just as or even more demanding. Former US Secretary of Heath, Education and Welfare John Gardner warned us of the consequences of a policy that values “academic” careers over other careers: "The society which scorns excellence in plumbing as a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy: neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

Singapore wants to encourage reading ("Making every day a reading day," April 20). Good idea. According to an analysis done by Prof. Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh and me, Singapore is one of several countries that falls into what we call the "test prep" group: high reading test scores, low levels of poverty overall, but neither children nor parents report that they like to read. Our conjecture was that the high test scores were the result of lots of reading of school texts, plus extensive test-preparation, or "gaming the test." Some of the proposals made by the National Reading Movement (in "Parliament: First National Reading Day to be held on July 30 to help nurture love of books," April 11) for encouraging reading have no basis at all in the research, and are, in fact, contradictory to what is known about encouraging reading: These include proclaiming a national reading day, setting up book clubs, and getting people to make a pledge that they will read more. The latter will only result in is making people feel guilty that they were not able to live up to their promises. Other proposals are well-supported by research, proposals to ensure that potential readers have access to interesting reading material e.g. setting up reading corners in community-owned centers and making sure new communities have a library. Access in the form of libraries is especially crucial in high poverty areas, where the only sources of books is often the library. Access is the obvious prerequisite to reading.

The National Reading Movement also plans to make electronic material available to commuters. Unfortunately, this will consist of "recommended" reading pre-selected for those riding on trains. Unless a huge amount of options are made available, this plan runs counter to research showing that self-selection is crucial to voluntary reading. (One study showing this, by Sy-ying Lee in 2007, appeared in a journal published in Singapore.)

Given access to truly interesting and comprehensible reading material, most people will read. Reading can become a "positive addiction," so pleasurable that we don't have to urge people to read or make them promise that they will read.

Finally, we have to take a harder look at school, and make sure that younger children are read to from interesting storybooks, that school libraries are well-stocked with interesting reading material staffed by credentialed librarians, and that time is set aside for free reading in school, all demonstrated to be strong predictors, not only of reading achievement but also interest in reading.

Singapore wants to encourage reading ("Making every day a reading day," April 20). Good idea. According to an analysis done by Prof. Elizabeth Ka Yee Loh and I, Singapore is one of several countries that falls into what we call the "test prep" group: high reading test scores, low levels of poverty overall, but neither children nor parents report that they like to read. Our conjecture was that the high test scores were the result of lots of reading of school texts, plus extensive test-preparation, or "gaming the teset." Some of the proposals made by the National Reading Movement (in "Parliament: First National Reading Day to be held on July 30 to help nurture love of books," April 11) for encouraging reading have no basis at all in the research, and are, in fact, contradictory to what is known about encouraging reading: These include proclaming a national reading day, setting up book clubs, and getting people to make a pledge that they will read more. The latter will only result in is making people feel guilty that they were not able to live up to their promises. Other proposals are well-supported by research, proposals to ensure that potential readers have access to interesting reading material e.g. setting up reading corners in community-owned centers and making sure new communities have a library. Access in the form of libraries is especially crucial in high poverty areas, where the only sources of books is often the library. Access is the obvious prerequisite to reading.The National Reading Movement also plans to make electronic material available to commuters. Unfortunately, this will consist of "recommended" reading preselected for those riding on trains. Unless a huge amount of options are made available, this plan runs counter to research showing that self-selection is crucial to voluntary reading. (One study showing this, by Syying Lee in 2007, appeared in a journal published in Singapore.) Given access to truly interesting and comprehensible reading material, most people will read. Reading can become a "positive addiction," so pleasurable that we don't have to urge people to read or make them promise that they will read. Finally, we have to take a harder look at school, and make sure that younger children are read to from interesting storybooks, that school libraries are well-stocked with interesting reading material staffed by crediential librarians, and that time is set aside for free reading in school, all demonstrated to be strong predictors, not only of reading achievement but also interest in reading.

Sunday, April 24, 2016

(1)Helping
students find their own path: Discover your own talents, develop them, and use
them for the benefit of all. As Picasso expressed it: “The
meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” This is a profoundly pleasant path and results
in great accomplishments.

(2)Competency-based education (CBE): a radical and
expensive innovation that replaces regular instruction with online
"modules." Students take tests in order to move to the next module.
It is being pushed by computer companies without consulting educators and
without a proper research base.

It is called "personalized" because (a) students can work
through the modules at their own speed and take end-of-module tests only when
they feel ready. Given the fact, however, that speed in working through modules
is the criterion for determining student, teacher and school success, the
pressure on students to work quickly will be strong. (b) it is claimed that CBE
provides and gives credit for alternate ways of solving problems. The
alternatives in problem-solving offered are constrained, however, by what designers
of the module consider in advance to be acceptable methods. CBE appears to be
the opposite of "personalized."

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Posted at http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/04/20/474369584/a-union-firebrand-speaks-out-on-politics-testing-and-more

The new education law does indeed appear an attempt to calm down our national testing hysteria. Even President Obama has spoken out about the negative impact of over-testing. Some of this is of course due to the impact of the opt-out movement.

But the testing industry is striking back, with the full cooperation of the US government: The new plan is to replace end-of-year standardized tests with what could be daily testing. The core of education will consist of modules of programmed instruction that students will work through online and be tested on, which will drastically diminish the role of teachers and increase profits of technology companies. The new education law announced grants for the development of these teach-and-test machines (see sections 1201 and 1204).

The National Governor’s Association has admitted that there is little evidence supporting this major shift to what they call “competency-based education,” yet has enthusiastically supported it.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

In a recent speech, Secretary of Education John E. King mentioned the huge vocabulary gap between students from affluent and less affluent families. He also mentioned research showing that those with more background knowledge do better as readers.

There is one activity that contributes powerfully to closing the vocabulary gap as well as building background knowledge: Self-selected pleasure reading.

One of the best established results in educational research is the finding that reading is the major source of our vocabulary knowledge beyond the few thousand words that make up the bulk of what we hear in everyday conversation. Reading aloud to children also contributes to vocabulary development and does so in two ways: hearing stories helps build vocabulary, and it also stimulates an interest in reading.

Studies by Stanovich and his colleagues confirm that those who read more know more about literature and history, and have more "cultural literacy." This is no surprise, but readers also know more about science and even have more “practical knowledge." Consistent with this research, Dean Keith Simonton, a prominent researcher on creativity, has concluded that "omnivorous reading in childhood and adolescence correlates positively with ultimate adult success."

Much of this reading is fiction. University of London researchers have recently confirmed that the amount of fiction read is an excellent predictor of adult vocabulary size, independent of the amount of nonfiction read.

For many children of poverty, their only access to reading material is the library. Despite an impressive number of studies showing that library quality and the presence of a credentialed librarian is related to greater reading achievement, support for public and school libraries is declining.

If we want to close the vocabulary gap and build our students' knowledge base, let's encourage more recreational reading and make reading possible by supporting libraries and librarians.

Published in The Hill, April 19, 2016
http://thehill.com/opinion/letters/276878-we-need-to-find-a-replacement-for-standardized-tests-that-works

Rosa Rosenfeld feels that opting children out of standardized testing is an example of excessive "coddling" ("The opt-out movement and the coddling epidemic," April 6, 2016).
We need the tests, she argues, because few New York State students are rated as "proficient" in reading and math, and American academic performance is low, compared to other countries. Please look at the research: When we control for the effect of poverty, American students rank near the top of the world on international tests. Our mediocre average performance is due to the fact that we have so many children living in poverty, now about 25%, the highest among all industrialized countries. It has also been argued that the score needed to be considered "proficient" is much too high: Most students from high-scoring countries would not reach this level.
Ms. Rosenfeld also needs to take another look at the tests given now and what is planned for the future. Students in the US are now being tested more than anytime in history. There is no evidence that these tests are doing our students any good, and they bleed valuable time and money from our schools. The opt-out movement is a rational reaction to overtesting, and unresearched, unreasonable standards.
Ms. Rosenfeld also might want to study what our government in cooperation with testing and computer companies is planning for the future. Regular instruction will be largely replaced by "competency-based education," a radical and expensive innovation that replaces regular instruction with computer "modules" that students work through on their own. It is limited to what can be easily taught and tested by computer. There is very little evidence supporting competency-based education; nevertheless the new education law explicitly provides funding and the National Governor's Association has cheerfully endorsed it.
Concerns about overprotection are valid, but this does not mean that "anything goes."

Stephen Krashen
Morna McDermott
Peggy Robertson

Original article: http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/education/275154-the-opt-out-movement-and-the-coddling-epidemic

Friday, April 15, 2016

Presented at the International
Conference on Applied Linguistics and Language Teaching) at National Taiwan
University of Science and Technology, April 2016, invited panel discussion

We have
not exploited the most obvious and inexpensive uses of technology in language
education, but are instead encouraged to spend substantial amounts of money
using ineffective and even untested commercial programs.None of these programs that I have seen
(except one, see below), makes a serious attempt to provide language students
what they need the most: compelling comprehensible input. (1)

I
present here some attempts to do this.

Beginning Level

Reading

Technology
can help close one of the the largest gaps we have in the language teaching
profession: interesting and comprehensible written texts for beginners and low
intermediates, especially in languages other than English. In fact, technology can
solve this problem in a very short time: I suggest we set up blogs with stories
from classes around the world, to be shared with beginning level students
everywhere.

We have
begun to do this with beginning Mandarin, where there is an obvious lack of
easy and interesting texts. The teachers involved in this project are all
practioners of TPRS, a method developed by a former high school Spanish
teacher, Blaine Ray. TPRS is based on teachers and students co-creating stories
that are of great interest to the students and that involve them personally.
Our team of teachers is sending some of the more interesting stories from their
classes to one website, and teachers from ANY Mandarin class can use them,
without asking permission. It is all for free.The project has been underway for only a few months months and we already
have a substantial collection.(2) (3)

Narrow
listening

Narrow
listening was introduced 20 years ago (Krashen, 1996) as an extension of narrow
reading (Krashen, 1981, 2000), and took advantage of the technology that was
available at that time. In narrow listening, language students record
proficient speakers discussing a topic of interest to the student.The students can then listen to the
recordings as often as they like, and ask similar questions of other
speakers.Repeated listening, interest
in the topic, and familiar context help make the input comprehensible.

In
Rodrigo (2004) fifth semester college students of Spanish listened to short
(one to three minutes) recordings of native speakers of Spanish talking about
topics of interest to the students; 80% said that this kind of listening was
better than other kinds of listening activities they had done, and none thought
it was worse. Also, 95% thought it was useful in helping them acquire
Spanish.I suspect that narrow listening
is even more powerful is when students choose their own topics, and ask their
own questions, that is, when it is more personalized.

Narrow
viewing

Narrow
viewing is only an idea right now. It is an extension of narrow listening, but
adds visual context by making a video, not just aural, recording. Visual
context is a powerful aid to comprehension and thus acquisition.

Videos
are now easy to make for anyone with a current cell phone.

There
are, of course, plenty of videos easily available on the internet, but nearly
all are for native speakers, well beyond our beginning and even many of our
intermediate students, and the few that are comprehensible are pedagogical,
with little or no evidence that they work. Narrow viewing solves this problem.

(An
early product, Destinos, a detective story in comprehensible Spanish, is still
available, but Amazon lists it for $160 new and $65 used. )

Movie
Talk

TPRS has
taken advantage of technology by adopting Movie Talk: The idea, developed by
Ashley Hastings, is simple – play the visual of a real movie with the sound
off, and the instructor supplies the narration, discussion, description and
dialog in a way that is interesting and comprehensible to the students (see http://glesismore.com/movietalk/preview.html).

Intermediates

Intermediates
are language acquirers who have reached the stage where they can understand at
least some "authentic" input (made for native speakers).

Free
Voluntary Surfing (FVS)

FVS
means simply following one's own interests in reading on the internet, a form
of narrow reading. Readers are free to wander from site to site. FVS enables
intermediates to take advantage of the vast amount of reading material
available on the internet, while ensuring that the input is comprehensible and
interesting, because it is self-selected.

Suggestive
evidence supporting FVS comes from a first language study. Jackson, von Eye,
Biocca, Barbatsis, Zhao and Fitzgerald (2006) provided 140 children from
low-income families, most between ages 12 and 13, with computers with internet
access. Jackson et. al. reported that more internet use resulted in improved
reading, as reflected by grades and standardized tests. The improvements were
present after six months of internet use for test scores and after one year for
grades. The data did not support the hypothesis that better readers used the
internet more; rather, internet use improved. reading.

The children in this study clearly liked web-surfing:
When asked what their main activity on the computer was, 33% said it was “web
search” (Jackson, von Eye, Biocca, Barbatsis, Zhao, and Fitzgerald, 2005, p.
263).

Wang
and Lee (2015) studied the effect of a year of websurfing on second year university
students in Taiwan who were not English majors. Students surfed for 20 minutes
at a time at least once a week for one academic year.

The
results of interviews revealed that the students greatly appreciated the
freedom to follow their own interests. They made better gains than comparisons
did on a vocabulary test, due to their superior performance on portions of the
test probing knowledge of infrequently occurring and academic words.

ESLPod

ESLPod (ESLPod.com) is a commercial enterprise. (I am
not financially associated with it any way.) It uses a simple but I think very
effective approach: ESLpod provides access to a wide variety of aural English
texts that are appropriate for intermediate and advanced students, especially
those who have studied English as a foreign language in school but often lack
the confidence and the competence to use English in the real world in certain
situations.

Much of the ESLPod virtual library is written by the
owners of ESLPod, both experienced teachers and highly accomplished scholars in
language education. ESLpod offers access to its extensive library for a modest
fee, and also makes transcripts of texts available, as well as cultural notes,
"tips on improving your English," a glossary with sample sentences,
and a discussion of idioms. ESLPod is constantly adding to its highly
interesting repertoire.

Conclusions

I have focused here only on straight-forward uses of technology
as a means of providing comprehensible input. All the suggestions presented
here are inexpensive (mostly free), and are easy to use.More ideas for the use of technology to
supply comprehensible input are emerging constantly. In fact, I think we are
about to see an explosion of compelling comprehensible input in many beginning
and intermediate language classes.

Notes

1. I
assume here the correctness of the Comprehension Hypothesis, its special case,
the Reading Hypothesis, and the desirability of highly interesting, or
"compelling" comprehensible input.

2. The
current "Great Mandarin Reading Project" team consists of Haiyun Lu,
Pu-Mei Leng, Diane Neubauer, Xiaoyan Wang, and Linda Li. I am an honorary
member.Guidelines for those wishing use
the website and/or contribute are at: http://www.ignitechinese.org/project.

Chinese
can be written in one of three ways: The traditional system, used in Hong Kong
and Taiwan, the simplified system, used in China, and "pinyin,"a romanized version.The reading project accepts stories in any of
the three systems.

3. As a
beginning Mandarin student, I have contributed several essays to the
collection, although they did not result from a TPRS in-class story. Here is
one of them,

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

"Big question on New York State Tests," (April 5) reports that one of the arguments in favor of a robust standardized testing program is to reveal achievement gaps. But we already know which children are doing poorly and we know what to do about it.

Decades of research has revealed that the major cause of the achievement gap is the effects of poverty, including poor nutrition, lack of health care, and little or no access to books: the best teaching in the world will not help if children are hungry, ill, and have nothing to read.

There is no evidence that massive testing closes the achievement gap, and plenty of evidence that improving the economy, or at least protecting children from the effects of poverty, does.

Stephen Krashen

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/nyregion/big-question-on-new-york-state-tests-how-many-will-opt-out.html?_r=0

Monday, April 4, 2016

Sent to the Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2016Supporters of the current testing program argue that standardized tests can help parents see how their children are doing in school ("Battle Lines Drawn as Student Testing Is Set to Begin" April 3). There is, however, no evidence that the current standardized testing program provides better feedback to parents than teachers' evaluations of students. Studies done at the secondary school level show that grades are an excellent predictor of future academic success, and the results of standardized tests do not add additional information. There are, in addition, reasons to think that teacher evaluation of students is better than standardized test scores.The repeated judgments of professionals who are with students every day is probably more valid than a test created by distant strangers and given only once.Moreover, teacher evaluations of students are “multiple measures," done by different teachers in different years, are closely aligned to the curriculum, and cover all subjects.Proposals for giving students any standardized test must be accompanied by evidence showing that it provides more useful information than grades alone.Stephen KrashenProfessor EmeritusUniversity of Southern California

Saturday, April 2, 2016

"Pioneers in bilingual education to reunite at TWU in Denton" (April 1) concludes with an important statement by Prof. Martha Morolez-de Anda: “We have the data, the research, and the skills, but not enough bilingual education teachers.”The public is not aware of how right Prof. Morolez-de Anda is. Studies done over several decades have shown that bilingual education works: students in bilingual programs outperform students with similar backgrounds in all-English programs on tests of English reading. The data and research supporting bilingual education is stronger than ever. In a recent study, California State San Marcos Professors Grace and David McField reviewed all previous studies comparing bilingual education and English immersion. Their conclusion: when both program quality and research quality are considered, the superiority of bilingual education for promoting English literacy is substantial, considerably larger than previously reported. Stephen KrashenProfessor EmeritusUniversity of Southern California

Original article: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/columnists/mercedes-olivera/20160401-pioneers-in-bilingual-education-to-reunite-at-twu-in-denton.eceSource: McField, G. and McField, D. 2014. "The consistent outcome of bilingual education programs: A meta-analysis of meta-analyses." In: The Miseducation of English Learners, edited by Grace McField, and published by Information Age Publishing.

Friday, April 1, 2016

The unfortunate tendency of children to want to play
and enjoy themselves must stop,

How can we maintain our economic and military
superiority if preschool and kindergarten children waste time "learning
about being a member of a community" and "how to get along with
others"? Contrary to June Sholnit Sale's assertion (letters, March
25), the problem is that we are not dedicating more of preschool and
kindergarten to academics.

And we need to start academics even
earlier: We need preschool readiness testing to ensure that parents teach their
toddlers to count and develop pre-phonics skills to prepare them for
preschool. I have recommended even earlier intervention: See my
paper, "Phonemic awareness training for prelinguistic children: Do
we need prenatal PA?" (Reading Improvement 35: 1998.)

The unfortunate tendency of children to
want to play and enjoy themselves must stop, despite claims of mushy-minded
"experts" who claim that play improves "social and emotional
development," whatever that is.